Can Animal Assisted Therapy help lonely residents?

If you are looking for a fun and engaging way to reduce loneliness amongst care home residents, then Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) or Pet Assisted Therapy (PAT) could be just what you are looking for.

The therapy involves bringing animals into your care home for residents to pet and sit with and has been shown to significantly reduce feelings of loneliness.

This is important because loneliness is an all too common problem amongst care home residents.

In fact, in her thesis ‘Loneliness in care homes: a neglected area of research?’, Christina R Victor found that severe loneliness among elderly care home residents was at least twice as common as among elderly people living in the community: 22–42% for the care home population compared with 10% for the community population.

Why is tackling loneliness so important?

Addressing loneliness is a very serious matter for care homes and their residents, not only because loneliness can affect emotional wellbeing, but also because it has been found to have a very detrimental impact on physical health.

Moving into a care home can be a very stressful experience for some people, so supporting their mental and physical well-being with ongoing animal companionship seems like a win-win policy for all concerned – pets included!